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kanyiko — Mahymobiles - Trabant 601S
#car #museum #trabant #trabi #mahy #mahymobiles
Published: 2019-11-09 23:01:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 808; Favourites: 27; Downloads: 4
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Leuze-en-Hainaut (Belgium), October 31st 2019What better picture to post on this November 9th 2019, the 30th anniversary of the Wende, than that most legendary bit of Ostalgia, the Trabant?
The Trabant was the DDR's answer to West Germany's People's Car, the legendary Volkswagen. First designed in 1957 around a pre-War DKW engine (the 692cc two-stroke engine first built for the 1933 DKW F2) and built by the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau, the Trabant would end up being built in four generations: the original P50 (1957-1962), the Trabant 600 (1962-1964), the Trabant 601 (1964-1990), and the ultimate Trabant 1.1 (1990-1991), the latter finally exchanging its pre-WWII two-stroke engine for a... Volkswagen four-stroke. Of these, the most iconic is the Trabant 601, which would end up being built the longest (26 years), even though its production run was only meant to last until 1971. Unfortunately, little was changed in those 26 years of production - by the end of its run in 1990, the Trabant 601 was a 1962-designed car with a 1933-designed engine. The Trabant 601S was the 'Special Edition' of the Trabant 601, featuring non-standard items such as fog lamps, rear white light and an odometer.
While the Trabant was the iconic car of East Germany, it was also one of East Germany's most succesful export products, not just to Eastern block countries, but even to Western countries. This 1984 Trabant 601S was not an East-German 'refugee', but rather an export model built for the Western market and sold in Belgium, as the cash-strapped East-German state loved pocketing western valuta...
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Comments: 15
Saw a Trabant rally at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC; a strange sight but glad to see the owners were taking such good care of their cars.
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Mahymobiles is one of the rarer museums where not every car is in pristine condition - in fact, some cars are entirely restored while others are shown in their 'as found' condition. One of their more impressive 'barn finds' is - indeed - a barn find, namely a 1907 Renault 10 CV that is displayed entirely unrestored and as found, having resided in a barn for some 94 years.
The wide range of the museum's collection and the different states in which they are is best illustrated by a picture I took of their 'reserve collection' - some cars are pristine, some less so...
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I once read the Trabant being compared to a riding lawnmower which could carry passengers!
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They weren't all that bad, sadly enough they combined the best of the wrong eras - a 1960s body on a 1950s chassis driven by a 1930s engine, built in the 1980s.
VEB Sachsenring itself knew the design was outdated and tried to replace it with an all-new design, but they didn't have the finances to do it. They finally managed to replace the worst weakness from the design - the 1930s twin-tact engine - and replaced it with a reliable and modern engine - a licensed Volkswagen Polo engine of all things! - but by the time that car finally entered the market... it was too late. It was 1990, the Wall had fallen, and East Germany was being swamped by the West German second-hand car market.
Just 39474 Trabant 1.1's were built in 1990 and 1991 (out of 3.7 million built between 1957 and 1991); but the Trabant factory was outdated, inefficient, labour-intensive and generally loss-making; the only reason it had existed as long as it did was because it was fully state-founded by the East-German state. With that gone, the new unified Germany no longer funding the factory, and nobody buying Trabants anymore, the writing was on the wall. Ironically, the factory which by its end had started building the East-German people's car with a West-German people's car engine is now a Volkswagen engine plant.
Of course, the ubiquitous joke about the Trabant 601 is that '601 stands for space for 6 people inside with 0 confort and 1 person pushing the car'
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I don't think Trabants were ever exported to the USSR. Never saw them here other than carrying tourists from DDR somewhere to the Caucasus or the Black Sea resorts.
But what I see in the foreground was much, much more glorious thing! Jawa 350, the legendary motorcycle from Czechoslovakia. It was probably the most popular in the USSR, it was considered top-class, and while it was more expensive than Soviet 350cc motorcycles from Izhevsk (Planeta and Jupiter), Jawa was the most praised. The only thing that changed the situation was Izh Planeta Sport 350, which was fancier, but more expensive. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia…
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A car of its time, its nation and its system...
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This was the one where the body panels were produced from a cotton-based material, correct?
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Cotton and phenol resins, indeed. They called it 'Duraplast', but it was a common urban myth they were built 'from cardboard'. It's where the Trabi got one of its nicknames from: Pappe, or 'Cardboard'.
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Paint that little thing red and you have Rocko's Car from Rocko's Modern Life, I'd love to own one but I am also a big fan of the Opal Cadet. In particular a smart and tough little yellow one, much the same color as this Trabant owned by one Richard Hammond better known as "Oliver!"
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Richard Hammond's car is an Opel Kadett A - which was a West-German contemporary of the Trabant 601. Unlike the Trabant though, the Kadett would evolve over the run of its production: the Kadett A ran from 1962 to 1965; by the time the Trabant 601 died (still sporting its 1964 body), the Kadett was in its fifth incarnation as the Kadett E, a radically different car.
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Ah my apologies, I knew I spelt Kadett incorrectly, it does explain why this car gives me such a connection to Hammond's "Oliver" as they are related distantly. Would love eith of them for my own personal car that is for sure. Though if I ever need a vehicle that I want to survive a crash in, gotta go Hylux Toyota unkillable utility vehicle.
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... I ones had a 601! ... And later a Wartburg too! ... Those Were The Days! ... 
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Despite the fact it evokes 'spy movie', it also evokes 'washing machine'.
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